Proof that Calls-to-Action Work to Drive Engagement on Social Media

In the land of Marketing, if you want someone to take a specific action, you have to literally ask them to take that action. This theory is always arguable in many circumstances, and sometimes including a Call To Action (CTA) in your marketing communications might feel awkward – particularly with the uprising of social media. But, just like my mum always said to me, if you don’t ask you don’t get.

To put some evidence to the argument, Marketing Guru, Dan Zarella from HubSpot, conducted some research into social calls-to-action (sCTA) across multiple channels in recent years and found that without doubt, including CTAs into social communications produce increased action rates.

Key insights from the research are as follows:

Social Calls-to-Action Work on Blogs

Using a dataset of just over 50,000 blog posts, posts were analysed that contained three social calls-to-action, the words “comment,” “link,” and “share.” Posts including those words tended to get more comments, views and links than those posts that did not.

Social Calls-to-Action Work on Twitter

Using a dataset of millions of tweets, phrases such as “please retweet,” and “please rt” led to more retweets. Several other powerful calls-to-action, include “please help,” “spread” and “visit.”

Social Calls-to-Action Work on Facebook

Posts were collected on the top 10,000 most-liked Facebook pages and compared posts that contained the words “like,” “comment,” and “share.” Posts that included a call-to-action got more of the specific action they mentioned.

Don’t forget to Take Action!

Now you know there’s proof that social calls-to-action work to drive engagement on social media. So remember, the next time you are posting on Social Media and you want your audience to do sometime with your message, just tell them what you want. And of course, if you’re still not convinced, why not test it on your own brand for a month or two and see if your results tell a different story.

Below is an infographic that further summarises the research undertaken.